Burns and Calluses
by augustmonsoon
Summary: Hemione walks away from painful memories and Charlie goes through heartbreak, they're there for each other. No one says anything about love or forever. PG 13 for sexual references   nothing explicit


**Title:** Burns and Calluses  
**Pairing/Characters:** Charlie/Hermione  
**Rating: **PG-13 (for sexual references)

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing, and I do mean seriously nothing ( source images are not mine)

**Summary:** Hemione walks away from painful memories and Charlie goes through heartbreak, they're there for each other. No one says anything about love or forever.

**A/N:** Beta'd as always by the gorgeous **HeartofPaperBloodofInk** . Art can be found from my profile ;)

Comments are food for the soul, please feed the author (i.e comments are greatly appreciated, especially con-crit)

**Burns and Calluses|**

Ron doesn't even bother to turn up for the finalisation; it kind of proves her point. She gets divorced in less than ten minutes in the end, after waiting for three years. She doesn't feel any different, a little empty perhaps, a little blurry on the edges, losing her definition.

Charlie shows up on the steps of the courthouse when starting for home. She wants to hug him, cry on to his shoulder for a bit, something. She doesn't 'Ron's not here,' she says instead, Charlie is Ron's brother after all, and he's not here to see her.

He slings an arm over shoulder like she's still his sister 'I know,' he says 'I came to see you,' it's all she needs to hear.

'Where are we going?' she asks as they walk down the road.

'I know a place,' he says and steers them both into an alleyway.

She raises an eyebrow at the familiar coastline, pebbly coat descending into shingles that melt into the sea 'Bognor Regis? That's the place you know?'

He grins lopsidedly 'Yeah,'

They used to come here with the kids on the weekends, she remembers. Rose learned to swim in the sea, holding on to the wooden groynes that anchor the coast. Rosie hadn't been scared at all, little head bobbing in the white spray as tide after tide washed over her. Even after Rose could swim like a fish, Hermione had held her heart in her throat, almost looking away for fear when a wave crested over Rose's head. It seems an eternity ago now; it's scarcely been ten years.

The sun catches on the wrinkles the sea and makes bright strokes of light that she has to shield her eyes from but she stares on. When she was a younger, about ten or eleven her mother used to say _'don't look at the light for too long_' but she looked anyway, stared at the sun just afloat on the very edge of the sea, stared until she saw dancing yellow circles when she finally looked away. She thinks of her mother a lot these days a little tug of yearning on those days when she has no one to turn to, but her mother is far away, across many oceans and she's forgotten all about her little girl.

And there they are, those pinpricks on the corners of her eyes, she wipes them away furiously with the back of her hand and grins widely, forcing dimples in her cheeks when Charlie asks if she's alright. He smiles back, tentatively and holds her hand, squeezing until she doesn't feel so alone anymore.

They eat fish and chips from a bag, grease and salt coating their fingers, and when they're finished, 99 p ice creams. Charlie gains a foamy moustache. Hermione reaches up to wipe it off, laughing, and licks it off her thumb; she doesn't think anything of it.

The beach starts to clear as the sea turns metallic and the streetlamps on the pavement above the beach switch on one by one. When at last the neon light pools on the inky asphalt, and the sand turns from a burnt orange colour to dark, dark blue, Hermione thinks of going home.

Only home isn't what it used to be, Ron is long gone, all his things with him, there are spaces on the walls where his pictures used to be, corners that were once occupied with things Hermione used to hate, things she moved to the garage, covered with sheets. There is only negative space now and it looks at her with resentful eyes and accuses her of driving the occupants away.

Rose and Hugo are meant to go to the Burrow for exactly half of the summer, the very first day of August but she lets them go a fortnight early, watches their eyes light up when she tells them. Then home becomes just a house, but worse than that, a house filled with shadows and ghosts of things that should have been, she finds herself at the beach more often than not.

She sits there alone, mostly, reading sometimes, gathering conchs and shells absentmindedly while she walks along the shore. She finds a shell with tiger stripes painted with chestnut brown the second week, when in the end she throws her collection back into the sea she keeps this one, thinks about making it into something, framing it. She thinks it reminds her of a necklace her mother used to have, but these days she can never be sure, there are so many things she remembers vaguely, seen as if through half lidded eyes, she has begun to lose what was reality and what she has created as a history for herself.

Charlie comes sometimes; sometimes he sits beside her telling her stories about Norberta, about a Horntail he found, the Longhorn he's been looking for in the mountains. Other times he strips off his shirt and runs into the spray, sometimes he drags Hermione with him. She's the one who's younger but Charlie's got this youth about him, this energy even if grey curls are creeping down the nape of his neck, he's got this vitality and he makes her forget. Sometimes.

It's not just the beach; she runs into him a lot these days, at the supermarket, at the bookshop she goes to, in Diagon Alley. She thinks about asking him whether he comes because of her but she can never quite muster up the courage, she's never had the reason to be vain she tells herself, this isn't any different.

'I'm moving to Prague,' he says one day and without thinking she wishes aloud she could go with him, he gets that look then, all serious, so rare on his face and he looks right at her and says 'you should come,' she laughs it off, tells him there's no way, her entire life is in London, in England.

He doesn't push it but she can't shake the thought, she sees Prague (the idea of it at least) as she buys groceries in the supermarket, when she sleeps, when she walks home in the rain.

In her mind Prague is painted with inks. Oranges and scarlets and ochres bleeding together, into each other, spilling out of the lines. There are spires and turrets and cathedrals with green domes, curving bridges with old lampposts on pillars standing sentinel to the iron cast statues. There are no greys, no thick black straight lines telling her how to speak, how to behave, most of all the memories that cling to the streets of London don't follow her there. She is free.

She says yes.

It's everything she hopes, as far from what she's left as anything can be, that in itself is all she asks. She leaves London without saying goodbye, there's no one really to bid farewell to, Rose and Hugo are grown up, she hasn't spoken to Ron or anyone at the Burrow except in passing in over two years and as for Harry and Ginny, well somewhere along the way they had drifted apart. Ginny is Ron's sister and Harry is his best friend, there is no place for her.

She first hears about Leah from Ivan who works with Charlie. Teasing, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, a dirty joke, just banter as they pack the dragon eggs into a crate for shipping to the reserve. It could be about any random girl (God only knows Charlie gets through enough) but she notices how his smile is forced at the crude joke, the look in his eyes that dares Ivan to cross the line. She smiles at the thought that he may have finally found someone worthwhile, for a man who smiles so much, Charlie is rarely truly happy.

They see Leah a lot after that, 'I just work with her,' Charlie says shrugging when Hermione asks and she takes a sip from her cup and hides her smile because she's seen the way he looks at her, the way he talks to her late at night, fire dancing in his eyes as he leans closer and closer to the fireplace. 'I just work with her,' turns into 'we're just having fun' and then into 'maybe, maybe she's the one,'

Hermione helps him pick out the ring. It's diamond encircled by rubies 'pigeon blood' says the sales assistant 'from Burma', not once does she rub her own ring finger, missing the weight that had sat there for almost twenty years. Charlie wants her to help him practice and she does, sitting on a chair, smiling when he gets on one knee and almost crying when he pretends to open the ring box.

She kisses him on the cheek as he leaves to pick up Leah for the restaurant. She whispers 'good luck' into his ear when she reaches on tip toes to hug him goodbye. When he's gone, she leans against the closed door and wonders why she feels so sad, why she feels like a little part of her has been torn away.

She doesn't mean to wait up but she falls asleep in the armchair all the same. She doesn't hear the key in the door, nor the sound of it swinging shut, or his footfalls in the dark. Only when the couch springs creak in protest of his slumping down does she stir.

'Back so soon?' she whispers into the gloom and she hears him sigh, heavy and weighted, not all like him, always so light and carefree.

'Yeah,' he replies, voice thick, another sigh, rattling, 'she said no,'

She gets up, somewhat blearily and switches on the table lamp, casting fragments of tinted light over the two of them. 'Well that doesn't matter, you can try again,'

He laughs, bitter, so unlike Charlie that it sends shivers down her spine 'she said no, Minnie, she said no and she's moving to China. In my book when a girl says no and moves half way across the world it means a pretty firm rejection,'

She gets up from her armchair then and sits beside him, leaning forward and clasping his hands. She tries to hold it like he used to hold hers a lifetime ago on that beach, squeezing, squeezing until he doesn't feel so alone.

'I don't know why I'm surprised,' he says at last 'I'm just not meant to have a family,'

'What? You have basically a tribe for a family,'

'Yeah, and look at me, I'm sitting in a different country, basically a different continent almost, I hardly ever see them unless it's an occasion or a holiday and even then it's pretty touch and go, they never come and visit, don't bother to use the fireplace, or send a owl…'

'Shush,' she whispers, rubbing the top of his hand with the pad her thumb 'you know they love you,'

He sighs 'well, I'll just have to get used the fact I'm going to be alone, it can't-'

Her lips are on his before she knows she's breached the distance between them. It's hardly a kiss, just her lips gently pressing her against his, it's nothing but what small comfort she can give him but it feels momentous.

She is a girl again sneaking looks at his blue eyes, the barest hint of scratchy stubble, russet locks caught ablaze by the light of the sunset, sitting across the table at the Burrow, she is a girl watching him stride across the grounds one night during the Triwizard Cup, hearing his laugh thrown by the wind through the open window of her room. She is the girl always afraid to say more than what was necessary, only she isn't a girl anymore.

He presses back against her, gently parting her lips. and they are tangled limbs and urgent kisses and that night they are not alone. And if they are, at least they are alone together.

The morning after, she expects something different. Something to have changed, to be fractured but when she walks into the kitchen all she finds is Charlie in nothing but boxers cooking scrambled eggs, with the stereo on. She stands, leaning against the door frame watching him sway to Mr Brightside, occasionally humming a line until he turns around and sees her.

'Morning,' he says dances over to her, catching her in his arms and twirling her around kitchen.

'You seem happy,' she says swaying against his chest with his arms crossed around her.

'Why shouldn't I be?' he asks, just the slightest hint of edge in his voice.

'You know why,' she replies as an instrumental fills the kitchen.

He lets her go and turns away, flicking his wand to turn off the stereo 'can we please not talk about it?'

'Okay,' she replies and they don't talk about it.

They are tangled limbs and urgent kisses, they are brick walls and satin sheets, everything they need. But there are things in the fringes of her vision, things that sometimes she wishes her hers, they are never those. They are never laced fingers on bridges, never surprise roses; they are never slow dancing in the rain. They are never forever, never promises, even whispered, they are now, and they are here, and sometimes, sometimes, when the sun shines the brightest, that is enough. When she feels invincible that is all she needs.


End file.
